GDCA Newsletter : May 2012

Throughout my career I’ve specialized in solving people’s process problems. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I’m enjoying my role as CEO of GDCA. When looking at obsolescence, you can’t just look at one piece at a time; you have to examine it in the big picture. If you don’t, it’s difficult to see how the end-of-life (EOL) of a single part will impact the sustainability of an entire system. This is how we ensure indefinite support for embedded applications—by understanding and managing the longevity of the entire embedded board and system.

At GDCA, we’ve spent the last 25 years supporting, maintaining, and ensuring the legacy of every system we’ve had the pleasure to work with. We have seen first-hand the impacts of embedded EOL.

This work is important to us, and it is my experience as a consultant that enables us to deliver on GDCA’s commitment to you; transforming embedded computing obsolescence into an easily manageable business process.

My hope for this periodical is to serve as a digest for all things related to obsolescence, legacy, and EOL. It will include upcoming events and announcements, our latest favorite Critical Thoughts, inside industry information, and some fun stuff too.

Looking forward to another 25 years of working together.

Ethan Plotkin, CEO

25th Anniversary

After 25 years of leading the way in obsolescence management, we’re looking at both supporting the future and celebrating the past. We are honored to have grown alongside a community of partners, customers, and distributors who guide the future of the embedded industry, just as we support and tend to the legacy of its past.

Because of this, we wanted to include you in our celebration too. One major contributor to our growth has been the amazing partnerships we have developed and we are feeling grateful and compelled to make some sort of gesture. Then someone suggested a raffle…

Celebrating the Past: How well do you know GDCA? How masterful is your obsolescence knowledge? Here’s a chance to show what you know while also doing your part to contribute to Apple’s Q2 earnings. Take our 25th Anniversary Trivia Quiz, and if you answer all of the questions correctly, your name will be entered into a drawing where we’ll choose five Obsolescence Masters who will each win an iPod Shuffle or Nano.

Our final drawing will take place June 4th, 2012, and winners will get their name in lights in the GDCA Hall of Fame (unless you choose to remain anonymous to keep distant relatives at bay). Click here to take the quiz.

Critical Thoughts

Live on our website is our new Critical Thoughts page. This section has our latest insights and musings in all things legacy, end-of-life (EOL), and obsolescence. It also includes write-ups from conferences and events in which we’ve participated. We know that obsolescence is a serious subject, so we’re mixing up our Critical Thoughts to include everything from commentary on overstocking, to upcoming work-break pieces like the EOL Band playing House of the Rising Sun.

While we may be the pioneers in solving obsolescence issues, we also know that some of the best work comes from collaboration and industry partnerships. If you have a topic you’d like to see covered, or if you would like to be a guest author, we’d love to hear your ideas and thoughts…

To check out our latest EOL insights, here are this last quarter’s GDCA Favorites:

You asked and we responded
We are happy to announce the ability to search our product database by National Stock Number (NSN) on the GDCA Website Products Page. Please keep the good ideas coming.

Keeping TRACC of What’s Important
We here at GDCA are committed to providing world class products and services. As such, we invest significant effort in nurturing a collaborative culture and bringing that collaboration to our community. To this end, we value:

Teamwork: Work together to achieve a common goal.

Respect: Treat others as you’d prefer to be treated.

Accountability: Take ownership of and fulfill our responsibilities.

Continuous Improvement: Identify and implement change in pursuit of excellence.

Customer Commitment: Meet or exceed our customer expectations.

As we work together, we invite your feedback on how we’re doing in these (or any other) areas.

Hope you enjoyed the Newsletter and thanks so much for taking the time to read it to the end!

We thought people may be interested in our travel schedule. If we are in your area and want to reach out and talk about your companies’ obsolescence / legacy / EOL challenges, please feel free to contact us directly to schedule a meeting. We like to share our experience, and enjoy meeting folks who’re experiencing obsolescence management issues.

June 26-28 2012

Center for Lifecycle Management Symposium at University of Maryland, College Park, MD

Come join us for our presentation: Supporting Long-Lasting Embedded Applications: counterfeits are the symptom – obsolescence is the illness.

July 16-18 2012

Performance Based Logistics Conference in Washington, D.C.

August 6-9 2012

NI Week in Austin, TX

Come visit us at our booth…we are pulling out the stops this year!

August 27-30 2012

DMSMS in New Orleans, LA

We are sponsoring the pens this year- they should be pretty darn cool.

CNN—A Blast from the Past

It was inevitable. As we began planning our 25th Anniversary, we quickly became nostalgic. What was our first product line? Who were the first three employees? Who has been here the longest…and just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, one of the team brought to our attention a pretty spectacular Past-Blast-story done on GDCA by CNN in 1996.

While we no longer view ourselves as the “geriatric physicians of the embedded industry” it goes to show our team commitment to helping people take care of their long-lasting equipment, for so long in fact, that the board featured in the segment and all of the people featured are still with us.